Whether it’s in print, tv or on the web retro graphics are becoming more and more popular in today’s media. Today we’ll be going through a few photoshop techniques used to create retro graphics. Feel free to download this tutorial at the bottom of the page and follow along with each layer as we create a retro city scene from the 70′s. We’ll be going through a step by step process to create the following city scene: […]

Creating a grunge style website in Photoshop takes a variety of different brushes, fonts and techniques in order to implement it correctly. In this tutorial we’ll go through the entire process of creating a grunge website from start to finish. Once you’ve completed the tutorial below you should end up with a design similar to the following: Start out by creating a new document with a white background at 774px by 900px (These dimensions are for the […]

In this tutorial we’ll learn how to create custom brush patterns and apply random effects to remove the copy/paste appearance the pattern comes with. This is a useful technique when trying to create a variety of shapes in different sizes, opacity, colors and angles without having to duplicate and modify each shape individually. I’ve applied this effect on a series of bamboo sticks to illustrate the randomness of the effect. Start out by creating a new document […]

Removing backgrounds from images can be a much easier process than most people think. The first approach a lot of people take is going directly to the magic wand or polygon lasso tool in Photoshop. While these are both very powerful tools and can achieve great results when used correctly, they can still be somewhat time consuming and aren’t always the correct approach when removing a background from an image. In this tutorial we’ll go through a […]

Creating a work of art out of any ordinary photo isn’t as difficult as you may think. The below graphic only requires a total of ten layers and a small handful of filters. If you’d like to follow along using the original artwork file I created, scroll to the bottom of this tutorial and download the PSD file. You may also prefer to follow along with an image of your choosing that you would like to experiment […]

This is a very useful filtering technique I’ve used quite a few times to make a dull image look brighter and more saturated. The photos take on a sort of dream like quality once the effect is applied. On the below tutorial I used a landscape, but the same process can used on just about any type of photograph which needs a little more life and color quality. First open a dull image you’d like to enhance […]

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a retro sun ray effect using Photoshop. This effect can be applied on banners, flyers, artwork or any form of design where a radial rectangle pattern is needed. Keep in mind by simply altering the thickness of each ray you can achieve different results. Step One Create a new document (the image above is 380px by 400px). Using the pen tool draw an outline of a mountain/hill shape. Feel […]

Another quick tutorial on how to create wires and cords using photoshop. I’ve found this effect very useful when it comes to interface design, you can easily size the cords to be however small/large you’d like as well as the angle/direction you’d like them to go. Step One Select the rectangle tool and create a stack of 6 segments each a different color with an additional segment on the side(this will be the link). Step Two Edit […]

This is a quick tutorial on how to create a screen effect pattern using photohop. You can use this effect in a variety of ways such as creating a background pattern on a flyer/banner, adding texture to an interface or simply placing it on top of text. You’ll want to set the opacity fairly low when using this texture as it can be a little too dark at times. Try to also play around with different colors both on […]